Fund the 2014 WABA Policy Fellowship
Last week, we posted our year-end appeal letter on our blog (WABA members and supporters may have also received the appeal via surface mail in the past few weeks). This week, we’re reposting descriptions of the projects we hope to fund through your donations for 2014; we asked for $30,000 to fund entirely and we have currently raised $13,051 thanks to your generous contributions. Make a tax-deductible donation to WABA right now and make our advocacy, education, and outreach dreams a reality!
Today, read about the WABA Policy Fellowship, which will cost $12,000 in total.
Every time a crash is reported, WABA responds. We have created a tracker to ensure that crashes in our jurisdictions are brought to our attention. We also have a mobile app that helps crash victims know what they, and we, need following a crash. Each time a crash is reported, we help the bicyclist understand the process for properly reporting the crash and provide advice on how to proceed through the complicated process of recovery. We speak with every crash victim possible, but we need to do more.
Advocacy depends on data. The realm of bicycle advocacy has precious little, which hampers how effective cycling advocates can be. WABA needs to be able to gather and analyze data from logged crashes in order to develop convincing arguments for specific bicycling improvements.
For much of 2013, WABA retained a policy fellow, Janie Nham, who crunched numbers from our crash tracker and assessed the best practices of police departments across the nation. She spent countless hours looking for patterns in data and developing proposals for legislation and enforcement improvements. Some of Janie’s findings have already made their way into law through D.C.’s Bicyclist Safety Amendment Act, and we are using her best-practices research to engage with law enforcement officials throughout the region and improve their understanding and enforcement of biking laws.
But we do not have the funding necessary to regularly compile the data that comes through the crash reports to identify trends, note unsafe conditions in need of improvement, and call out systemic errors in police response. The WABA policy fellowship was funded from January through August 2013 through the support of two generous donors, but there are no funds for a 2014 fellow.
Estimated need for a 2014 WABA policy fellow: $1,000/month stipend, totaling $12,000. Donate now!
Every time a crash is reported, WABA responds. We have created a tracker to ensure that crashes in our jurisdictions are brought to our attention. We also have a mobile app that helps crash victims know what they, and we, need following a crash. Each time a crash is reported, we help the bicyclist understand the process for properly reporting the crash and provide advice on how to proceed through the complicated process of recovery. We speak with every crash victim possible, but we need to do more.
Advocacy depends on data. The realm of bicycle advocacy has precious little, which hampers how effective cycling advocates can be. WABA needs to be able to gather and analyze data from logged crashes in order to develop convincing arguments for specific bicycling improvements.
For much of 2013, WABA retained a policy fellow, Janie Nham, who crunched numbers from our crash tracker and assessed the best practices of police departments across the nation. She spent countless hours looking for patterns in data and developing proposals for legislation and enforcement improvements. Some of Janie’s findings have already made their way into law through D.C.’s Bicyclist Safety Amendment Act, and we are using her best-practices research to engage with law enforcement officials throughout the region and improve their understanding and enforcement of biking laws.
But we do not have the funding necessary to regularly compile the data that comes through the crash reports to identify trends, note unsafe conditions in need of improvement, and call out systemic errors in police response. The WABA policy fellowship was funded from January through August 2013 through the support of two generous donors, but there are no funds for a 2014 fellow.
Estimated need for a 2014 WABA policy fellow: $1,000/month stipend, totaling $12,000. Donate now!